Nice, you are able to control yourself, still learn from the lesson and what triggered you, then you won’t M in the first place.
2 Likes
Well. Dammit. After 6 days I’ve relapsed.
Had been sleeping irregularly these few days. Slept a little tonight, then fell asleep around lunchtime and somehow got a nightfall (I think that’s the consensus on the name for it). Had headache and it was hard to think. Didn’t quite figure out to serf it.
Lately been attracted to one of my friends. She’s out of my league right now. Don’t know how to feel about it.
Will use the momentum to get on track with daily goals and quit YouTube once again.
As for positive things, today I have:
Washed my face with cold water.
Did 20 push-ups and 50 sit-ups.
Drank a lot of water.
Walked outside a fair bit.
That’s very much it.
It will be very hard to fall asleep this night, so I’ll try to do something useful for future me.
1 Like
Need peace with myself. It’s easy to lose an attrition battle with the evolutionary machine but it can’t be as agile as my mind. I can maneuver around it.
An interesting thought.
Also.
Stress from relapses will eventually win and then I’ll have to recharge to get a new good streak. If one focuses on streaks, they leave themselves vulnerable to stressing about the number. It’s been said a million times and will be said indefinitely - focus on creating, build the new, diversify your achievements.
2 Likes
This is the truth.
Also, forget about streaks. Focus instead on making a permanent commitment to abstinence. When we are committed to never PMO again no matter what, it doesn’t matter what day we’re on. All milestones will surely be achieved - the only thing standing between us and 90 or 180 or 1 year or 5 years and beyond is time. It’s so much more powerful and exciting to be on day 1 or day 3 or day 5 when you know it’s the LAST TIME you’ll be there. I am so happy and grateful for the last day 1!
Ask yourself if you’re ready to make that commitment, and if not, what’s stopping you. When I asked myself that question I found all sorts of reasons and excuses for further relapses, and I realised that if I didn’t stop NOW, I could keep going on for decades. A scary thought.
5 Likes
In the last three days I’ve relapsed many times.
Been observant. As I’ve mentioned earlier PMO addiction in my case (maybe lot only in mine) isn’t just as it is. It has a lot of allies. I’ve wrote down today things that come right before starting the relapse:
- Frustration - everyone gets laid except for me.
- Attraction - this girl is really attractive, wish she was with me.
- Boredom - there’s nothing remotely intresting to do right now.
- Stress - I’m boiling and need to let out some steam, otherwise I’ll blow up.
- Fear - I have serious problems in my life and I’m afraid to take action out of the fear of messing it up even further or just not knowing how to proceed, so I can’t do anything else, I’m powerless.
- Curiosity - I wonder what’s new…
It’s a rail-roaded inter-connected system of psycho-bingo which so happened to be feeding into my addiction. Basically a classification of urges.
Always found it strange how much fear affects my actions, but that came from a harsh upbringing. It is it’s own demon.
In the span of the last four months there has been a lot of negative development in points (1) and (2), that is, they cause a lot of relapses.
In the last two weeks point (5) flaired up again as I didn’t study much and I aquire a lot of perceved self-worth from my performance.
Physical pain feeds into multiple of these. I’ve only now recovered from my 4 weeks period of sickness and now I have a lot of pain in lower ribs, limiting my ability to perform physical work and exercise, it even hurts to lay down.
I may try to introduce this system in the future when referring to urges.
At least I’ve consistently been doing a bit more than 20 push-ups and 50-sit-ups for the last five days.
2 Likes
Valuable advice. I hope a lot of people see it one way or another. I was ready to commit when I came here. Right now, not so much.
2 Likes
A good place to start the recovery. Our team had won a big competition in the university just now and tomorrow I’m going to have military day. So, starting on the positive note. Tomorrow I will have very little time.
4 Likes
Absolutely right. There must be some reasons behind relapses. Think deeper about the patterns of relapse, then tackle them one by one. And many of them are emotional, so make sure you keep yourself emotionally stable 
2 Likes
You’re not alone by any means, this is very common in addiction.
Before we recognised ourselves as addicts, we didn’t need reasons to PMO. We did it out of sheer desire for pleasure and escapism. But when we learned that it was ruining our lives and developed a desire to quit, a tug-of-war started inside us between our true selves and our brains.
The allies come from the brain and not from you. The real you is the one who joined here, ready to commit. Each one of those allies is the brain speaking to you in your thoughts, trying to convince you to relapse. The brain sees PMO as an essential part of your survival since it receives such a high amount of dopamine from it. Mistakenly, it believes that by getting you to relapse it is saving your life.
- The brain wants you to view PMO as a substitute girlfriend. Everyone’s got sexual urges, right? If you can’t get a girl, why not PMO? But this attitude is keeping you from developing yourself and approaching women so you can get a girl. The sexual desire is supposed to motivate us to seek a mate, not a screen.
- The brain wants to keep you trapped in longing for a attractive girl, so it can convince you that attractive girls are found in pornography. There are attractive girls out in the real world, but it will take work to get with them.
- The brain sees nothing as exciting or worthwhile besides the highest sources of dopamine, like PMO. If you were an alcoholic or a drug addict, you’d hear the same voice telling you the same excuse. The real you on the other hand has important goals for his life, that’s why he chose to quit PMO. The brain would be happy to sit in front of a screen binging on pornography for decades, only stopping to eat or sleep. That would be a truly boring and miserable existence for you.
- The brain creates the illusion that PMO somehow relieves stress. In actual fact, the only thing you receive relief from is the craving or urge for PMO, and that only temporarily. Breaking our word to ourselves and going back on our commitments is incredibly stressful to the real us. We are zapped of our energy, our motivation, our creativity, some of us feel anxious or depressed post-relapse - all of these increase stress, not reduce it. The real you was fully aware that his life wasn’t going to be all peaches and cream because he stopped PMO, but he knew he could handle the stress anyway.
- The brain loves to use our fears against us and try to convince us that we are powerless, incapable of solving our problems and that there is no point in trying. It knows that when we’re in that state of low consciousness, we will seek comfort in dopamine rich activities like PMO. But that same brain will start coming up with solutions to our problems if we direct it to. Don’t forget that it believes it is helping you solve a problem by giving you urges to PMO.
- The brain is hijacking your natural desire for novelty and excitement in your life. Curiosity is a beautiful part of the human experience. But of course the real you knows that videos will always keep coming out as long as there is a market for it. 160 years’ worth of videos are uploaded to The Hub every year. You could live to be 1000 years old and there would still be new videos to watch, even new videos that fit your particular tastes. And truthfully we’ve watched enough pornography to be bored by it. The same scripts, the poor acting, the people pretending they’re having the time of their lives, the fake moaning, the fake climaxes, the exaggerated body parts and cosmetically altered actors, if we’ve seen one clip, we’ve seen them all. When the brain comes to you speaking about the fear of missing out, remind yourself of the JOY of missing out. Of being free from that poisonous mess. The real curiosity is in seeing just what life will be like on the other side of this addiction. Now that’s a true adventure.
You are not your brain, you are its master. It has to play all these games because you are in control of all voluntary action, and it needs your permission to relapse. It can’t do so much as wiggle your fingers against your will. Remind yourself of why you committed to this journey in the first place. All the things that the addiction has done to you. Imagine a future 5 years from now where you’re more addicted and it has taken even more from your life. Now imagine the future where you’ve been free and clear for 5 years and leading a happy and fulfilling life as someone who simply never PMOs. Make your choice which life you want.
4 Likes
Survived the urges yesterday and today. Was pretty difficult. Had a lot of social events planned for the weekends, but they were canceled.
Was procrastinating a lot, but at least I was drawing a lot today and sleeping an appropriate amount of time. Doing some sports as well. Unfortunately, can’t doo pull ups as I got a roque rib that hurts every time I do even one. Push ups and sit ups in the while.
Have also been interested in listening to shortwave radio and watching some lectures on biology and phycology on YouTube lately.
And been practicing not caring about getting appreciation, since I’ve noticed I’ve been asking for it lately. Stuff like not showing my drawings to everyone when getting a chance. Good for self.
4 Likes
Appreciate others for their work first, then you will get appreciations naturally (not necessarily from the people you appreciate). This is karma or the law of attraction 
I have experienced it personally.
You may also keep an appreciation journal, think of one person that you appreciate each day.
1 Like
Going to increase daily amount of the push ups to 30.
Had a few urges. Holding up.
3 Likes
Attempting to limit the socmed usage to 3 hours on both my phone and notebook.
Exeptions: Rewire Companion forum, Duolingo, shortwave related forums. These three I can doomscroll to oblivion.
3 Likes
Had a serious goddamn urge a couple of hours ago. Part serfed, part powered through.
Had the kind of very elevated pleasure response to everything in the last three days. Like, the music felt louder and more complex, any art was brighter and more alive. I haven’t really found a good explanation as to why. Some say it’s the leftover dopamine from the relapse, but It’s been six days. I won’t be fully convinced till I find how long it takes for dopamine to breakdown in the body and Google’s inability to understand the question makes it only more difficult.
It’s the kind of pleasure response that I, albeit in more manageable way, will have (and had) once I get to a few months clean. Not only from PMO, but minimizing other stuff as well.
2 Likes
Got past the day. Didn’t peek, but it was getting in my head.
Didn’t manage the time on socmed.
Did the daily workout.
3 Likes
Had a lot of things to do today. I was outside attending things and studying from 7:00 to 20:00.
Today felt like my head was incredibly clear. Almost at all times I just thought about what I do and was able to do things immediately as I thought of 'em, without the usual tug of war.
Made myself a very nice dish. Was a while since I made myself anything like that.
I’ve also been very surprised to stumble across a designer who was looking for a translator to hire, which is my specialty. I might have something interesting happening in professional field if I play my cards right and study hard in the near future. It wouldn’t be possible to start a conversation with them as well as I did if I haven’t been so clear headed.
I’m looking forward to growing beyond the limit, now that I had a glimpse of just how damn cool I can be at my prime.
4 Likes
Didn’t do much of the things I planned tho. Including sports but I walked a fair bit. Did do some plans.
2 Likes
Still going strong.
Yesterday our team at the university gor a second place in a citywide competition, very big stuff(For me especially). I’ve been feeling weak and down that day before we were called on stage, but now I’m quite happy and content.
There were some urges in these 2 days, but they lasted up to a minute. And I was successful in seeing them.
I’m not thinking of the streak. Also serfing many unrelated thoughts.
2 Likes
There is inumerous kinds of meditations but the one recommended for us beginners is vipassana , which is just paying attention to your breath, and nothing else
you basically have to observe the sensations that the air produces when entering your nose, lungs, and observe the sensation of it getting out
1 Like
I’m on the end of my rope right now.
Wanted to read EazyPeazy way to quit for a while now. Thought it could have something useful to helf me proceed now that I’m all the way up to 12 days. Got through the first 50 pages today but in the process it sparked the memories and my urges went from 1 to 10. Thought to finish it to get rid of it, as is written in the book itself, but it only got worse.
Did not relapse, nor peek at P, but did M a little. I’m in a lot of pain. Keeping myself through with sheer willpower. Stopped reading it.
1 Like